New life for Nolan

“When I got back up to the A team I was offered two trials at Blackburn and Leicester. Just because one manager thinks you’re not good enough for an A team doesn’t mean you’re not. When Pat Gilroy started with Dublin I wasn’t anywhere near the squad. He asked me to play a couple of challenge matches with a third Dublin team. That’s when I got a look in. I’d trace that back to the soccer thing. Someone thinks you’re not good enough you’re going to prove them wrong.”

The same streak ran through Dublin that year: skilled but dogged, successful but with so much to prove it hurt. In three years Nolan had won almost everything: Leinsters and All-Irelands with Kilmacud and Dublin, an All Star, a Sigerson medal with DCU. He had gone for soccer trials in England and batted away offers from Australia to play AFL. He was 23 and nowhere to go only get better. He did.

Although Dublin fell short in 2012 Nolan gained another All Star nomination. There was no doubts left about him. None at all.

But life had already gotten complicated. At the end of 2010 Nolan was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid. The solution was stark and incomplete. “All I was told was take these tablets for the rest of your life every day and your hormone levels should be okay.”

More tests in 2011 revealed he was a coeliac, but he wasn’t told the news till three days after the All-Ireland final. He was standing in the wings with the Dublin players at the Late Late Show that Friday joking about what the next mad diagnosis might be. It couldn’t get more complicated. Right?

Then more weird symptoms. He was waking nights needing the toilet. His weight dropped two-and-a-half stone in no time. “There was literally two and a half weeks where if I’d turned sideways I’d have disappeared. I went to the doctor and he said I had diabetes.”

Type 1 Diabetes. The one with five insulin injections every day. No one knew where it came from. The doctors suggested a major impact on his life could have triggered it. In less than a year Nolan had transformed his diet as a coeliac, pushed himself beyond the limit to win an All-Ireland and started a new job as a teacher. He could blame everything, but it would take him nowhere.

In time he researched his family history and found his father’s great-grandmother was a diabetic. His father was also a coeliac. Back in 2012 he just kept playing football. Pat Gilroy’s father was also diabetic which made the conversations easier. Nolan didn’t expect to see any game time before the summer, then Gilroy dropped him in at the beginning of the league.

“It was nearly the best thing. It was a sink or swim situation. I either had to get over it and manage it or worry about it constantly — I can’t do this because I’m a diabetic. His man-management back then was super. It was easy to talk about the issues that had arisen. His link with diabetes helped a lot.”

Jim Gavin’s arrival at the end of 2012 changed the tone. After struggling through some early season fitness assessments Gavin told Nolan to take a break till January. A new team took shape in the meantime.

“Jim would say just go flat out. I tried to do that, but my flat out wasn’t 100% at that time. Anything Pat asked me to do on the pitch I was getting it done. Jim came in with new ideas and gave lads chances. They took them. They were holding on to the jersey and I was trying to get it back.”

He got 20 minutes as a blood sub against Wexford and picked up an All-Ireland medal feeling on the outside looking in. New elements got absorbed easily into his preparations. He got his slug of energy drink at every break in play. He wore flip-flops in the showers to avoid any risk of cuts or infection. He calibrated his insulin intake to keep his blood sugar levels right before matches.

It was all manageable. Everything else was a struggle. He picked up injuries. He struggled for chances. By the end of the 2015 league, he was gone.

“I wouldn’t say it was down to the diabetes but if I had managed a bit better, in relation to training and matches it was a couple of per cent but at that high level you need to be at 100%. Maybe I wasn’t exactly there.

“Maybe Jim wouldn’t have known as much about (diabetes), or just that there was no excuses. And rightly so, I don’t see diabetes as an excuse. People have different things going on so it’s just about going as hard for the jersey as you can.”

Regrets? None. A little more understanding back then about managing his blood sugar levels might have helped. He always had help checking them during training sessions, but everything outside that was imprecise.

“My understanding now would be ten times better than it was when playing for Dublin. I was giving insulin with a bit of guesswork whereas now it’s a lot more manageable. I’d be a positive person. Things happen in life. My outlook is it could always be worse. That’s how I looked at the diabetes thing. Being diagnosed with an underactive thyroid, my doctor was saying that probably has more of an impact on energy levels than the diabetes. There was times when my levels were so crazy and off the wall he was saying you should really be asleep right now.”

Although his career is often boiled down to one hero point and a sudden disappearance off stage, Nolan lived through three different Dublin managers across seven years and witnessed three different lifetimes of Dublin football. He played with heroes under Paul Caffrey and made his debut in a Leinster final. He observed Gilroy stripping the panel of deadwood and puncturing egos in favour of those working for the collective. He saw the young players bolting through that allowed Gavin shape a team as he wished, the same way Nolan and others helped Gilroy after 2009.

“The way Jim goes about it is almost army-like that it’s all regimental stuff. You have a plan set out and the drills are set out. Everything is nearly timed that you know what’s happening at a certain time in the hour. But there’s a lot of young lads coming through and a lot more competition has helped that. If Jim asks someone to do something, they’ll do it because they know if they don’t they’ll be gone from the squad.”

Nolan is in New York this summer playing some ball and making a few bucks on the sites. In a few weeks he comes home to school and football with Kilmacud and his work as welfare officer with the CPA, distilling down medical, diet and training information for its members. Another life, still within reach of his old one. On a Sunday like this, it feels an ocean away.